


our bodies, possessed by light

by fishingrods



Category: Gintama
Genre: Angst, Body Horror, Character Study, Communication Failure, Consensual, M/M, Post Joui War, Suicidal Thoughts, Unrequited Love, Violent Thoughts, before yorozuya, dont read this for sex part only bcs its not even horny, nothing violent going on its just takasugis imagination, sex is described in a very small part, spoiler : they separated after this, takasugi-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-11
Updated: 2021-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-18 05:47:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29978292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fishingrods/pseuds/fishingrods
Summary: He thinks of staying. He thinks of telling Gintoki,"Here is my heart. Here is your sword. Here are my weaknesses that I want you to know. Do whatever you want with it."
Relationships: Sakata Gintoki/Takasugi Shinsuke
Kudos: 9





	our bodies, possessed by light

**Author's Note:**

> cw : just. read the tags ig. hmu if i missed any warnings.

Takasugi brings him in. He wraps Gintoki into his arms as he buries his own head in the side of his shoulder blade. The fact that it’s so easy for his head to fit in there feels so sinful. He thinks of beheading the silver haired man and impaling his head on a pike just so that he can prove something to himself, to the world. (proving what? even he doesn’t know)

Gintoki hugs him back, reciprocating his sudden act of affection. It makes Takasugi succumb more into his hold. He inhales the faint smell of something sweet that Gintoki always gives out. It always manages to calm him down and a small part of him hates it. It’s too sweet that it’s sickening but he can’t help but

He hates himself for finding comfort in his hold, and he hates himself more for not being able to be vulnerable without being self deprecating.

It’s dark. They keep the lights off. One of Gintoki’s hands slowly goes inside his yukata and traces his body as though he is a sculpture worth billions of dollars that he had stolen from a museum. Takasugi stares outside the window as he’s being stripped naked. He notices a bird flying and then lands on the balcony, eyes staring at them. How laughable.

He feels fingers on his ribcage and he swallows, muscles on his upper body tightening as he slowly rests his back on the comfortable futon. _Please ruin me. Destroy me until I can’t feel anything_. He brings both of his hands to hold Gintoki’s face and feel the warmth against his cold palms. Red eyes, staring into his green one. The one that’s still usable. The one that manages to escape from the war.

“Gintoki.” He says, with no purpose but just to feel the name rolling out of his mouth. He doesn’t tell him that he says his name every once in a while when he’s all alone, as though his name is a prayer, a one way ticket out of the damnation that is life.

Gintoki hums back and smiles. “Takasugi.”

Takasugi blinks and then laughs.

He kisses Gintoki and then lets the feeling he has felt ever since he sets his foot in the other’s apartment washes over him like it’s a blessing. Takasugi kneads Gintoki’s hair and pulls it, causing him to pull away. His breath hitting softly on his mouth, smelling like cotton candy but his eyes looks so intense, he feels like he’ll get eaten and what’s left of him in the end will be nothing, not even bones.

Their tongues wrestle for dominance. Gintoki bites his lips, causing him to wince. Takasugi firmly holds his head as he deepens his kiss. He faintly hopes his own lips bleed from the previous biting incident and it’s smearing both of their lips right now.

When Gintoki pulls away, panting while looking away from him with light blushes forming on his cheeks, Takasugi wraps his arms around his neck. So delicately, so lovingly. He’s almost scared that Gintoki will think he’s being weird right now but the way he stares back at him like he’s an angel that just appeared out of nowhere in the stinky, extremely underpriced apartment at 1 am tells him otherwise.

They’re rarely like this. It usually starts with a “why the hell are you here?” coming from Gintoki when the bandaged sad fool knocks at his door as if he needs permission or Takasugi’s “oh look someone’s lonely” taunt when the mophead lonely fool goes to the bar that he rarely visits, just because he knows Takasugi will be there.

Sometimes, on days like this, Takasugi falls. In someone’s arms. In his own arms. He falls into the deep, dark abyss. He doesn’t tell anyone this, but whenever he falls even an inch deeper with his feet, soaking wet, he imagines someone will be there to catch him. He imagines a pair of arms pulling him away from the eternal darkness and basks in the fresh sunlight that drowns him further.

When it happens, Gintoki takes him in the way Takasugi imagines home does. It’s comforting in ways no prayer could ever tame the demons that taunts him every second. Sometimes, Takasugi pities him because he’ll never actually know how heavenly his entire existence is. It’s like a butterfly that owns a pair of beautiful, bright wings that is oblivious to its own beauty as it never has laid its eyes upon their own beauty.

Gintoki feels something wet on his collarbone. He’s quiet and still, waiting for Takasugi to be the one who does something first. They stay like that, with Takasugi straddling his body, their chests against each other until Takasugi pulls away and stares deep into his eyes. He’s crying.

“Takasu-”

“Move.” Takasugi commands.

Gintoki wants to say _You’re the one who’s riding me. You said you want to let me top today. What the f-_

Gintoki holds his hip and thinks of how he seems fragile in his arms. He distinctly wonders if he’s been eating properly. He thrusts up and grips the other’s body firmer as moans escape his mouth.

Takasugi shakes in his arms and Gintoki looks at the way more tears fall down. He softly voices out his concern. “Do you want to stop?” _Are you hurting? Can we please just talk about it? What are we even doing?_

Gintoki holds out his hand to wipe the tears away but is stopped by Takasugi’s grip on his arm. Takasugi removes himself from Gintoki’s hold and tries not to whine from the sudden absence of his dick filling his insides. He manhandles Gintoki and pushes him on all four.

“I changed my mind.”

Gintoki doesn’t do or say anything. He stays still and lets Takasugi take him.

Takasugi dreams of hands pulling him apart, dissecting his insides as his blood slowly gushes out of him and soft, kind lips are planting kisses on his skin, tracing it like there’s something worth being loved in him. He will cry, not out of sadness but out of an unexplainable feeling that suddenly burst itself inside him like the fireworks he last saw with the stupid, yet earth-shattering man who owns a pair of bloody red, seemingly dead eyes and wintry hair to match with it.

He dreams of the world ending. Stars colliding, planets being burned to crisp as it shatters from being pulled towards the sun. He will find himself laughing as he’s dying, as if it’s all just a comedic act being prepared to entertain him.

He dreams, he dreams, he dreams.

He doesn’t tell anyone this, but he finds comfort in the idea of dying. And it calms him further in the idea that all mortals are dying since the moment they are born. In this world filled with uncertainties, the only thing life can promise mortals is death after all.

In this universe, Takasugi is the villain of the story. He kills people. He’s sad. The world betrays him every time he thinks happiness is finally in his grasps. He curses the futility of living but deep down he wants to know. If it’s worth it. If maybe he does deserve to live after all.

He imagines another version of him in other universes. The one where he lies next to Gintoki in a home that they both own. The one where he pulls Gintoki close and tells him to never let him go. The one where he’s in love with the act of living and life itself. The one where he never has to go to war, innocence radiating off his eyes and it never truly goes away even as he reaches adulthood.

Gintoki lies on the futon, eyes never leaving him. Takasugi stares at the way his curly, silvery hair rests on the pillow and hates himself a little more when he feels the urge to play with his hair.

Gintoki shifts slightly when he notices that he’s staring. “What?" Gintoki raises one of his eyebrows.

_I want you. I need you. I want to stay. I can't do this anymore. I love you. Please tell me you want me. That you need me. That you want me to stay. please tell me---_

Takasugi sinks his nails inside his palms. "you smell like you bathe in strawberry milk every day."

"Huh?!" He flashes him a mouthful of angry teeth. Takasugi tries to not imagine him ripping his throat out with his sharp canines. Keyword : tries.

Takasugi rests his head on gintokis chest and continues to insult him. "it's so sickening, really."

"I don't wanna hear it from someone who smells like they do nothing but smoke every second."

"That's normal. Adults don't smell sweet."

"I’m young at heart!"

takasugi laughs mockingly at that. "I know, it's so obvious."

“Takasugi, you’re horrible. You know that?” His voice sounds monotone and Takasugi finds it hard to accept it as an insult or not. Oh, right. It’s a statement.

Takasugi sits near the balcony and watches as the bird flinches and flies away at his sight. Smoke comes out of his mouth and Gintoki imagines that he is a mighty dragon that disguises himself as a human and slowly makes his way into his sleazy, fucked up life with his unpredictable attitude and sorrow expressions, hidden under his usual sarcastic, angry attitude.

“Ah, yes. Telling someone you just slept with that they’re horrible. Is this how you make all the chicks come back after every round?”

Takasugi is the only one who keeps on coming back. Takasugi is not a chick. Gintoki furrows his eyebrows and merely replies, “You came back.”

He stares outside the window. The city is so full of life, a blatant contrast of the atmosphere in the apartment. He quietly breathes out. “Yeah. Yeah, I did.” _Because it’s you._

Takasugi empties the ashes in his kiseru and turns away from the window. He stares at Gintoki, who is lying just a few centimetres away from him but it feels like he'll always be unreachable.

Gintoki stirs and turns his back on him. The rise and fall of his body indicates that he is still alive. He is safe. They are safe.

He thinks of staying. He thinks of telling Gintoki, _"Here is my heart. Here is your sword. Here are my weaknesses that I want you to know. Do whatever you want with it."_ He thinks of waking up the very next day in Gintoki's arms, warmth rapidly spreading across his skin like the chicken pox he had gotten when he was 4, so short, so small that the shinai he always used while practicing kendo was almost longer than his height.

He stares at the feathers that the bird left on the balcony floor and the memory of him running around the field with Gintoki and Katsura, trying to catch pigeons flashes through his mind. He tightens his grip on the kiseru.

He dresses himself and drags his feet to the front door. He looks at Gintoki, expecting him to do anything, say anything. Snoring noise fills the house. Takasugi knows he's faking it. He has watched the man asleep countless times that he remembers clearly how soft and light his body gets, chests rising and falling so slowly you’d think he’s almost on the verge of dying.

He's a coward and he's a coward and they're both cowards. Takasugi contemplates bringing him down with him. He wonders how Gintoki will respond to his _“I want to destroy the world.”_ He wonders what kind of response will satisfy the insatiable hunger in him that continues to encourage him to make his fucked up fantasies come true. He thinks there’s none.

The snoring noise disappears once he walks out of the place.

In another universe, Takasugi has an endless amount of courage. His teeth bite Gintoki’s name with determination and full of promises. His hands holding the other’s with no hesitation nor shame. His useless pride is thrown out of the apartment window as he declares his love towards Gintoki like it’s a death match. Only one of them will come out alive but the way Gintoki kisses him convinces him that they both will go down.

In this universe, however, he falls all alone. He no longer imagines hands pulling him out. He bids the owner of those helping hands farewell, after all.

**Author's Note:**

> YYYYYUP ITS PANDEMIC. I AM SAD. I AM LONELY. I AM FILLED WITH SORROW THAT I MUST EXPRESS IN THE SHAPE OF A FUCKED UP MESS CALLED TAKASUGI SHINSUKE. anyways my one and only trusted friend (i have horrible trust issue and abandonment issue) is moving away to a scary and foreign continent that i shall not say to protect her privacy and im just. trying to cope. i listened to the nbhd, mother mother, the 1975 and others. i read richard siken and fics that contain words that resonates with my current condition. nothing works so i just say fuck it lets write stuff. heres the stuff. i had fun writing this hehe
> 
> title is from Scheherazade by richard siken but idrk if this fic vibes with it so i cant say this fic is inspired by it lol. i was also thinking for naming this fic based on body of years by mother mother but i decided to save it for other fics that are better suited lol.
> 
> \----  
> anyways in my mind this happened after joui war and before yorozuya is a thing. OKAY SO GINTOKI LIVED IN THIS SHITTY APARTMENT. IDK WHERE TAKASUGI LIVED BCS ITS NOT IMPORTANT. basically this is when takasugi is still tiptoeing on the line that separates "destroy world" and "dont destroy world." now imagine what'll happen if takasugi actually gathered his courage and confessed. imagine what'll happen if gintoki had stopped fake sleeping and stopped him from leaving.
> 
> now imagine me doing the whole hide feelings thing at my friend. imagine me trying to not tell her not to go or else ill crumble and lose will to live because thats not smth normal to tell your friend or anyone for the matter. IDK WHERE IM GOING WITH THIS IM SORRY ILL STOP OKAY BYE.
> 
> twt : dazaified. tumblr : fishing-rods.


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